The present invention relates generally to drawer slides, and more particularly to drawer slide member structures.
Drawer slides are commonly used to extendably mount casings in a structure, for example drawers in a cabinet or computer equipment in a rack. The use of drawer slides often allows for compact storage of casings, while providing relative ease of user access to the casings or items in the casings when desired.
The loads carried by drawer slides can at times be significant. The loads can exert significant forces on the drawer slides, particularly when the members of the drawer slides are extended from the structure. In addition, in some applications space allowed for drawer slides, particularly in width, may be limited, placing a premium on relative strength of drawer slide components. Unfortunately, a requirement for a thin drawer slide may prohibit the use of thicker and therefore stronger material in drawer slides, which may be undesirable in any event for cost reasons.
In rack mounted computer equipment applications, in particular, very little room may be allocated in width for a drawer slide, and the computer equipment itself may be heavy. Complicating matters, computer equipment may be in varying sizes. For example, often computer equipment is sized in a one rack unit (1U) size or a two rack unit (2U) size, and the different equipment sizes may often correlate with increased weight of equipment. The use of equipment of different rack sizes complicates drawer slide design, and, inconveniently, different drawer slides may be required for the different rack sizes.